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Groucho Marx’s Republican Party

Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik was a close adviser to President Bill Clinton, and he’s famed in Washington circles for his closely held, big-think memos on the state of American politics. In his latest, posted here with his permission, he says that Republicans' efforts to win the midterm elections will make it hard for them to take the White House in 2016.

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“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” —Groucho Marx

In just a few words, Groucho Marx summed up the current state of the Republican Party heading into the 2016 presidential elections. Since the start of George W. Bush’s second term nine years ago, the party has been in political free fall. The GOP is in a state of transition, moving away from the Washington D.C. establishment-based, neoconservative party that has dominated Republican politics for a generation toward one increasingly controlled by conservative and populist interests outside the Beltway.

As part of this transformation, Republicans running for office are increasingly adopting far-right positions on economic and social issues that may play well in the midterms, but are well outside the mainstream for presidential-year voters.

At the national level, Republicans continue to be viewed as the congressional opposition party whose intransigence led to the government shutdown last October. These same interests actively worked to scuttle immigration reform this year. In this environment, it’s the likes of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and California Rep. Darrell Issa who define the Republican brand.

The struggle for the party’s future is playing out in real time as we approach the crucial period leading up to the 2016 elections. Ironically, Republicans’ short-term tactics to pick up additional seats in the 2014 midterms—as well as the rightward pressures of the presidential primary process—will only reinforce the public’s perception of the Republican Party as unwelcoming and out of step with the majority of Americans.

We are now entering the most critical phase of the upcoming presidential campaign. And, if history is any guide, by the time the first votes are cast in the Iowa caucuses in January 2016, the dynamics that will determine which party will win the White House will have already been set. These underlying forces are already taking shape, and they will begin to solidify next year as the Republican Party continues its rightward march.

The early zeitgeist

Ahead of each of the last nine presidential elections, voters’ sense of the times – their attitudes about the direction of the country, their own personal well-being, the incumbent president’s job performance and the two major political parties—began to solidify. Once set, that mood rarely changed, and formed the prism through which voters evaluated their presidential choices. Candidates were seldom able to alter the course of the general election, except at the margins.

Over the last 32 years, eight out of last nine presidential elections fell into one of three categories: 1) time-for-a-change elections, 2) stay-the-course elections, and 3) a version of the stay-the-course elections when a superior general election campaign mattered. The exception was the 2000 election.

In three of the elections (1980, 1992 and 2008), the incumbent president and his party were so unpopular that the outcome was largely preordained, despite the usual campaign drama. Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush all had job-approval numbers at 40 percent or lower during the general election campaign phase, dragging down their re-election prospects, or, in George W. Bush’s case, that of their party’s nominee. In each example the country was experiencing a significant economic downturn, making voters even more unwilling to give the party in power another four years in the White House.

In three others (1984, 1996 and 2012), the incumbent president and his party were popular enough that the parameters for their re-elections were set before the general election began. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama each had positive momentum heading into the general, with job-approval ratings approaching or topping 50 percent.

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1980: The horse-race numbers showed Carter leading for most of the 1980 presidential campaign up until the end of October.

Despite the appearance of a close race, the reality was that the country had been increasingly souring on Carter’s presidency throughout the year. At the beginning of 1980, Carter’s job approval numbers went into political free fall, dropping from 58 percent in January to 31 percent in June in five months.

Dissatisfaction with Carter was so strong that he was forced into a protracted primary against Ted Kennedy, which lasted all the way until the Democratic Convention in New York. By the end of June, seven out of 10 people disapproved of Carter’s job performance. The disapproval persisted and his job approval hovered at or below 37 percent for the rest of his presidency. Even though voters were unsure about who they would vote for, they seemed pretty locked into who they weren’t going to vote for in November.

The electorate wanted to support Ronald Reagan, but many voters were deterred by his age and some of his policy positions. For much of 1980 many alienated Carter voters parked their vote with independent John Anderson (who was polling as high as 24 percent in June) while they deliberated on Reagan.

After the campaign’s only debate on Oct. 28, Reagan finally cleared the bar of acceptability and Carter’s candidacy virtually collapsed overnight. On Election Day, Reagan carried more than 50 percent of the vote in the three-person race and won 489 electoral votes in 44 states.

1992: President George H.W. Bush was no Ronald Reagan. Broad disapproval of his stewardship of the economy doomed his candidacy before the start of the three-person general election race with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

Bush’s job approval cratered from 66 percent in October 1991 to 39 percent by February 1992. His weakened condition forced him into a primary challenge from the right by Pat Buchanan. Bush’s downward spiral continued until Aug. 2, when his support bottomed out at 29 percent. His Oct. 15 job-approval rating of 34 percent came close to his final vote of 37 percent.

With the exception of a brief a post-convention bounce, for most of the period between early April and Election Day, six in 10 voters indicated that they did not plan to vote for Bush. In the three-person race, Bill Clinton glided to victory, winning 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) with 370 electoral votes.

2008: It has been said that John McCain was the only candidate to lose twice to George W. Bush. In 2000, he lost the nomination to Bush. And in 2008, McCain’s presidential campaign was doomed from the start due to Bush’s unpopularity. Despite McCain’s efforts to distance himself from Bush, the country was simply in no mood for four more years of a Republican in the White House. Bush started 2008 with a 32 percent job-approval rating, which by Election Day had dropped to 25 percent.

Although much was made about what appeared to be a tightening race during the fall period, the electorate’s overwhelming unhappiness with Republicans put Obama on an easy path to victory. In the final pre-election Wall Street Journal/NBC poll on Oct. 20, the Republican Party had a 48 percent negative rating and only a 32 percent positive one. In the end, Obama carried 28 states (plus D.C. and one congressional district in Nebraska) for a total of 365 electoral votes.

In 1988 and 2004, the incumbent party enjoyed a relatively strong base of support, but there were no guarantees of another term. In both of these elections, the Republicans entered the general election with a sitting president with approval ratings at or above 50 percent. However, in 1988 the popular president, Reagan, was not on the ballot; George H.W. Bush was. And in 2004, only a narrow majority of voters supported his son George W. Bush, who faced a strong and motivated opposition. Both Bushes faced very different election-year circumstances, but both needed to run a superior campaign to capitalize on their relative advantage over Democrats going into the general election.

And then there’s the 2000 election—the only true example of a presidential race that was decided during the general election phase and its aftermath.

The GOP’s structural disadvantage in 2016

The results of the 57 previous presidential elections have demonstrated the resilience and adaptability of the American political system. Over time, the process has given one major political party an edge over the other, but never a permanent advantage to either. But over the last 20 years, the changing face of the electorate has given Democrats an ever-widening structural advantage in presidential politics. Republicans’ short-term 2014 electoral strategy, as well as their 2016 presidential primary process, will only exacerbate this gap.

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Following the 2012 elections, the Republican National Committee (RNC) issued its “Growth & Opportunity Project” report, a comprehensive post-mortem analysis of the election that included interviews with more than 2,600 party leaders and online surveys of 36,000 activists. The final report was a 112-page indictment on the party’s failures to adapt to the changing world—especially when it comes to broadening its base of support among women, minorities and young people.

“The minority groups that President Obama carried with 80% of the vote in 2012 are on track to become the majority of the nation’s population by 2050,” the report noted. “The nation’s demographic changes add to the urgency of recognizing how precarious our position has become. … unless Republicans are able to grow our appeal the way GOP governors have done, the changes tilt the playing field even more in the Democratic direction.”

If anything, the RNC understated the urgency. Since the 2004 election, Republicans have steadily lost ground among women voters, Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and youth. Despite the clear trend lines, Republicans have continued to adopt positions that are seen skeptically—to put things charitably—by women and the fast-growing demographic groups that are increasingly necessary to win presidential elections.

Women now constitute 53 percent of all voters. In the last two presidential elections, women supported President Obama over the Republican nominee by double digits.

Since the 2012 presidential election, the Republican Party’s policy positions on women’s health and choice have only worsened these tensions with female voters. Rather than reconsider those positions, Republicans have concluded that they simply have a communications problem. Recently, the party hosted a two-day Washington D.C. seminar on “how to talk to women.” The conference, which was attended by 60 House candidates and a dozen Senate candidates, was widely ridiculed in the media.

Republicans face similar challenges with the fast-growing non-white voting population, which has been trending more and more Democratic over the last several election cycles.

Over the past quarter century, as the non-white share of the population has expanded, the white share of the vote for president has steadily declined, falling from 87 percent in 1992 to 72 percent in 2012.

In 2012, 88 percent of Mitt Romney’s support came from white voters.

Doug Sosnik is a Democratic political strategist. He was formerly political director in President Bill Clinton’s White House.